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The article reviews the book, "Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York," by Nancy L. Green.

This paper deals with the Needle Trades Industrial Union (NTIU) organization drive in the garment industry of the cities of Montréal, Toronto, and Winnipeg. I argue that the relative success of this branch of the Workers Unity League (WUL) in unionizing the female workforce originates in part from the union's internal representation structure. Women's work was isolated from men's by the sharp gender division of work, which characterized the garment trade. A union structure adopted to overcome this division of work, one based on the place of work (and not on the industrial branch) favoured women's participation to unionism.

The article reviews the book, "Through the Eye of the Needle: Immigrants and Enterprise in New York's Garment Industry," by Roger D. Waldinger.

This article reviews the book, "The Eaton Drive: The Campaign to Organize Canada's Largest Department Store, 1948 to 1952", by Eileen Sufrin.

In this study of the clothing industry in Canada, historian Mercedes Steedman examines how the intricate weaving together of the meanings of class, gender, ethnicity, family, and workplace served, often unconsciously, to create a job ghetto for women. Although 'girls', as working women were labelled, comprised a significant majority of garment workers - 80 percent in 1881, at the very beginnings of industrialization; 68 percent in 1941, when the percentage of women in all industrial sectors in Canada was only just over 15 percent - their roles were circumscribed both in the workplace and in the trade union bureaucracy. When strikes occurred, women were at the front of picket lines, gaining sympathy and favourable media coverage for the workers' cause. But when negotiations among union leaders, management, and government officials took place, women were conspicuous by their absence, and the subsequent agreements and job classifications invariably left them with lower wages and marginal status - in an industry where they were numerically dominant and often valued as the better workers. In "Angels of the Workplace," Professor Steedman presents a history of both the garment industry and the role of women in it. The rise of left-wing unionism held out some hope for a more equitable work environment, but by the 1930s a 'new unionism' that focused on labour-management co-operation - and on maintaining male hegemony on the shop floor and at the bargaining table - had formalized gender discrimination in the needle trades for the rest of the century. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Across the Great Divide -- The Industrial Fields of Activity: Send Forth Your Daughters -- Worlds Apart: Women and Unions in the Needle Trades, 1890-1920 -- From Shop-Floor Action to New Unionism: The War Years and After -- Taking a Stand: Civil War in the Needle Trades -- 'A Real Man's Fight': Clothing Battles in the Depression Years -- When the Boys Get Together: Orchestrating Consent -- After the Acts: Setting the Standards, Putting on the Pressure -- Conclusion: 'This Group of Girls and Men .... '

The drafting of Canada's industrial standards legislation and its consequences in the clothing industry are examined. In particular, it is argued that the legislation formalized the subordination of specific sectors of workers in the clothing shops. Although the traditional unions made some efforts to organize women, the presence of women in the union bureaucracy was limited. Because of this, the move away from shop-floor unionism towards industry-wide collective bargaining ensured that women had, at best, a peripheral position in union decision making. When the men in the industry sat down to negotiate the legal framework for their trade, most of the political maneuvering went on in a domain exclusive of women. In the negotiations for the legislation in Ontario and Quebec's clothing industry, men reaffirmed the gendered nature of the work in the trade through legal language enshrined in the industrial standards schedules set for the industry.

This article reviews the book, "Diary of a Strike," 2nd edition, by Bernard Karsh.

The article introduces the edited transcript of sessions of the Mine Mill Centennial Conference held in Sudbury, Ontario, in May 1993. The conference, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' Union, was attended by 200 people including union stewards, academics, labour leaders, and retired workers. The sessions provided a forum for retired activists to reflect on their lifetime of experience in the union movement as well as to address current political concerns. Themes included the union and communism, the union in the community, relations with other unions, women in the labour movement (notably the Mine Mill Women's Auxiliary), political activism, and the path forward for working people and organized labour. Brief biographies of the presenters are also provided.

This book brings together the voices of contemporary labour leaders, activists, old timers, and academics to discuss the first hundred years of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union. --Worldcat catalogue record

Every day millions of Canadians go out to work. They labour in factories, offices, restaurants, and retail stores, on ships, and deep in mines. And every day millions of other Canadians, mostly women, begin work in their homes, performing the many tasks that ensure the well-being of their families and ultimately, the reproduction of the paid labour force. Yet, for all its undoubted importance, there has been remarkably little systematic research into the past and present dynamics of the world of work in Canada. The essays in this volume enhance our understanding of Canadians on the job. Focusing on specific industries and kinds of work, from logging and longshoring to restaurant work and the needle trades, the contributors consider such issues as job skill, mass production, and the transformation of resource industries. They raise questions about how particular jobs are structured and changed over time, the role of workers' resistance and trade unions in shaping the lives of workers, and the impact of technology. Together these essays clarify a fundamental characteristic shared by all labour processes: they are shaped and conditioned by the social, economic, and political struggles of labour and capital both inside and outside the workplace. They argue that technological change, as well as all the transformations in the workplace, must become a social process that we all control. --Publisher's description. Contents: On the job in Canada / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 3-46) -- Dimensions of paternalism: Discipline and culture in Canadian railway operations in the 1850s / Paul Craven and Tom Traves (pages 47-74) -- Work control, the labour process, and nineteen-century Canadian printers / Gregory S. Kealey (pages 75-101) -- Contested terrain: workers' control in the Cape Breton coal mines in the 1920s / David Frank (pages 102-123) -- Keeping house in God's country: Canadian women at work in the home  / Veronica Strong-Boag (pages 124-151) -- Skill and gender in the Canadian clothing industry, 1890-1940 / Mercedes Steedman (pages 152-176) -- Mechanization, feminization, and managerial control in the early twentieth-century Canadian office / Graham S. Lowe (pages 177-209) -- Work and struggle in the Canadian steel industry, 1900-1950 / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 210-244) -- Logging pulpwood in Northern Ontario / Ian Radforth (pages 245-280) -- On the waterfront: longshoring in Canada / John Bellamy Foster (pages 281-308) -- Life in a fast-food factory / Ester Reiter (pages 309-326) -- Autoworkers on the firing line / Don Wells (pages 327-352).